Random 5 for January 1 – Dogs, holidays, parking lots, furniture, generosity

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Mollie: Is this thing trained? He's sleeping on my bed!

Mollie: Is this thing trained? He’s not going to fit in the litter box! He’s sleeping on my bed! Who invited him?

Can we keep it? – We don’t need a dog. (Really we don’t according to the cats.) I found this oversized stuffed black lab at our local Macy’s. He followed me home. I am a soft touch.

Holidays are almost over – As much as I look forward to the festive feel that comes with them, I am relieved when they are over. I want my world back to normal. I was at the grocery store on Friday and there was hardly any parking. They have a huge lot. These people should be at work so I can enjoy my leisurely weekday activities without annoying festive people preparing for parties to which I’m not invited.

Speaking of parking lots – At this same store I lost my car. I have a red RAV4. I hadn’t realized how many there are. I stopped at every red car in the parking lot before I found my own. You know those wonderful key fobs with the unlock button? For other cars you can hear the beeps in the next state. Not so with my car. It’s so muted I had trouble hearing it from 10 feet.

Unshrouding the furniture – During my cat Hazel’s illness this past week, I shrouded the furniture that she might sit on with towels . No body fluids on the furniture please! It was bad enough that the carpets were fair game! The house is back to normal now. So is Hazel. I may take a few more poop-free days.

Pay it forward – Customers did that again this year at my local Starbucks. I always feel badly for the person in front of me who picks up my $5 mocha latte. I, in turn, pay for someone’s $3 coffee. I think those things work best when you are surprising someone rather than as a chain. However, I will not break the chain unless the person in back of me is catering their office staff. (You know breaking a chain involves bad luck…..)

Hope your New Year is great and tell me, how was your week?

87 thoughts on “Random 5 for January 1 – Dogs, holidays, parking lots, furniture, generosity”

  1. I decided to jump back in by reading your Random 5! I have never been part of a “paying it forward” line. Perhaps I’ll need to start one sometime, but somehow I feel timid. LOL! And the only thing more difficult than finding a red RAV4 is a red Prius. There’s actually a joke about the Prius population in Los Angeles in the movie LaLa Land. I wander around a lot of parking lots. 🙂

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    • I am always surprised by the number of red cars generally. At my gym (which is populated mostly by older women), I walked up to and almost tried to get into 4 different cars (all red ones looking similar) before I got to mine. There were only 6 cars on the lot and one was gold.

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  2. The dog is adorable! Bet he becomes a cat cushion soon. As for the car thing, I have this issue with my fob. It won’t unlock the car or even blow the horn unless I’m right up on it, but it will sound the alarm when the button is mistakenly hit from inside the opposite end of the house at 3 am on a morning when I can’t sleep and decide to take the dog outside. Oh, man! My neighbors must hate me.

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  4. I used to lose my car all the time. It is low and hunches down behind other cars. I bought those Tile GPS things and leave one in the car. Naturally, since I sprung for it, I’ve not lost my car a single time. Must be psychological. I too am looking forward to the other people going back wherever it is they come from and leaving the stores for us professional crowd avoiders.

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  7. My NYE was maddening! I wrote about it over on my blog but overall a good day…. ahhh I am sorry you lost track of your car but glad you found it! And keep the dog! HE IS SO FLUFFY!!!!

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  8. I am looking forward to normal days and nights again. Although normal to me may be different than other folks. I like to think of myself as unique.:) Good to hear Hazel is doing well. Happy New Year!

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  9. I am so looking forward to everyone going back to work and school, and getting the heck off my roads and parking lots… what’s up with that? I have spent the lazy day today taking down the few Christmas decorations I put up. Every year at this time I am so grateful we didn’t put up a tree.

    Love the lab! I think I’d take it to bed with me just to cuddle (cats don’t do that very well).

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  12. We never seemed to hit crowds in parking lots this year. What shocked me were the number of stores and restaurants open on Sunday, the first day of the new year! After church we drove to an outlet grocery store where I was looking for a particular brand of decaf coffee for my friend who is coming to visit. The regular store had taken her favorite off the shelf. In fact, the whole line was missing, replaced by other brands. I thought we’d better look today, because we might never see that product again. We found one bag and pounced on it. There were very few people shopping. We and our grandsons ate BBQ and came home to NAP, big time.

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  14. I feel the same way about the gym that you do about the parking lot. There are going to be a ton of people on MY weight machines and MY Crosstrainers starting tomorrow and I am selfishly hoping they all give up on improvements soon. 🙂

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  15. Imagine if that doggie can wiggle it’s ears and scare the living daylight of Mollie! I think you should get a real one. Pay it forward is more fun when it’s unexpected. Break the chain and start a new trend for the Year!

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    • We have two Hallmark musical things that have movement. It’s only interesting the first time. They can tell real from not real fast. We do have a croaking frog that ribbits when you walk buy (motion based). Each one jumped 3 feet the first time and then the novelty was over. No real doggies here but we are enjoying the stuffies.

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  16. The dog looks so cuddly, unlike our cat. When we were shopping for our new car I was lamenting the lack of colors…seems like every car on the road is black, silver or white. We chose white because it keeps the car the coolest (I did a hand test). I have attempted to get into other white cars and am shocked to find that I can’t. Happy New Year to you Kate!

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  17. I love any dog you don’t have to walk. Looks so real.

    Yeah, I’m done with Xmas too. Yearning for normalcy, whatever that is. Don’t like the change of store hours. You have to be very vigilant to keep them straight. My corner Starbucks for instance, was so late today after telling me they’d be open at the regular time. WRONG! Had to go to another one that blasts disco music at 6 a.m.

    Glad Hazel is her old self. Read that in Sassy Cats. It’s awful when a girl, 4-legged or otherwise, is under the weather.

    Happy New Year Kate. We have 354 days left…:)

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  18. Love the lab. No house training or vet bills!
    My Dad got most anxius when he got inside the car and the steering wheel had ggone. Then he realised he’d got in the back (honest, this happened, way before the TV sketch). Maggie tries to hitch a lift in any blue car now (colour of our I10). 🙂

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      • I thought so too, though one family pet knew the difference in coloured biscuits and would only take the correct pink/brown/yellow in the row one as stated. I suppose they see colour, but not as we do, and her choice has always been for a small car like ours so perhaps she’s associating shape as well? They’re more intelligent than we give them credit for I think.

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        • They are way more intelligent than we give them credit for. They can detect weather changes and can tell when something is going to happen. Here they know when someone is going to the vet. They know when we are getting company. They send out Morgan as the sentry to view who it is before they peer through the staircase. Hazel knows when I didn’t give her a full can of cat food. She also knows when it’s all gone and there is no hope of another bit. They know lots of stuff.

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          • It’s uncanny and fascinating isn’t it. Maggie is tuned in to weather changes, and can tell the difference between boaters footsteps and visitors. She will also alarm up if something isn’t ‘quite right’ on our walks as her entire stance changes.

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  20. I agree with you . . . RANDOM acts of kindness mean more than chains of trained seals following the leader.

    Last night, we picked up a pizza for dinner. As we drove past the guard house into our neighborhood, we stopped to ask the guard (who was stuck working on New Year’s Eve) whether he wanted a slice. He BEAMED! After grinning from ear to ear, he declined our offer since his wife had packed him his favorite dinner to enjoy on the job.

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  21. I too am looking forward to having our life back to ‘normal’ (if there really is such a thing for us).
    Our holiday decorations are already down and put away for next year — hope that wasn’t too eager!

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    • We are having family in for a traditional NY’s dinner today so the decorations are still up. I envy you. It only takes a few hours but it’s a “downer” kind of thing. We’ll keep the candles in the windows until sometime in February. It seemed that this year, everything was busier than usual. The stores were open at 8 a.m. most days this past week. Looking forward to some sort of normal.

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